This is somewhere between a placeholder and a memory-jogger.
Funny comments, pictures, and witticisms will be added later.
ok, so I lied about the funny. and the witty.

This really starts with the getting there, which was not half the fun.
I mean, it wasn’t bad, though the bus did end up arriving late; It’s just that the ratio seems off in this case. I’d put it at no more than a twentieth of the fun, and most of that is down to a seatmate’s increasingly-frantic parents blowing up his phone.

 

I took ManaBus from Auckland to Taupo, because … Well, they’re cheap, and the last time I used them they gave me an Easter Egg.

They were not what you’d call organised at the bus stop. A chaotic shambles would be closer to the mark.
One increasingly-annoyed driver trying to check people on, and deal with baggage, and explain where this bus was going, and that that bus was taking the same route because there were a lot of passengers, … What they needed was more people, or maybe a sign.
Eventually bags and people got loaded, though there was a lot of confusion and concern in the crowd; Some people heard bits of the information, there was no-one to ask other than the driver, and he’d hit “I’ve already announced that” mode and was being passive-aggressive about it.
Apart from the bit where he decided that a camo-covered thing which was probably a tent, and was handed to him by someone of West Asian or Middle-Eastern appearance, was the perfect opportunity to make ‘jokes’ about the person being a terrorist. Really, a class act all around.

When I got to Taupo, I wrote this;

There may come a day when I will consider the calendar in a broader context when making travel plans, and make note of public holidays.
And there may come a day when travel through Auckland on a Friday before a long weekend by way of the roading network runs free and clear, unhindered by construction works, accidents, or thousands of people leaving work early in a futile attempt to avoid the crowds.

And the day may come that the City, and indeed the Country, possesses a public transport system worthy of the name, and people eschew their cars, traveling by train or light rail to their well-deserved vacations.

But it was not this day.

Yeah, there was traffic, and we got in a bit late, and the guy next to me made the mistake of telling the parent who was collecting him, and the parent back in Auckland, that this was happening.
They then constantly texted and called him for the next hour, asking for updates, and ‘are you there yet’, and so on.

 

Given that this is stop one of <<insert number here>>, I went with the easy option and stayed at the Great Lake Motel, where I’d stayed once before, back in 2009, before Trailwalker.

I’m going to work my way up to a bed in a dorm in a backpacker’s hostel, because I don’t really know whether I can do that sort of travel.

I didn’t have much of an agenda for Taupo, and this is borne out, I think, in what I did.
Not much.

I mooched about.
I looked at the pretty scenery.

I had a go at doing laundry, and went for a wander to find a laudromat.
Sadly, I forgot to get anything in the laundry liquid department on my way there, and I’d missed the line on the flyer which said “Self-Service On Weekends”, so getting some there was right out.
Going to chalk that one up to a Learning Experience, but it was still a nice enough walk, and I did acquire some emergency travel laundry supplies on the way back.

I saw Kung Fu Panda 3 and Zootopia.
(as it happens, at the same movie theatre at which I’d seen the original Kung Fu Panda – we’d been snowboarding in Ohakune, and the weather was crap, so we came to Taupo & went to the movies. also saw Get Smart that day)

Monday was ANZAC Day, and I woke up early enough to attend the Dawn Service, so I did.

The weather cleared up for the occasion, so things were both Scenic & Bloody Cold.
I am not regretting that Merino Base Layer long-sleeved thing.

 

It doesn’t show up in this picture, or any of the others I took, but I think I could see a vent on what I’m assuming is Tongariro.
I think.
Could have been an oddly-vertical cloud.

I also wandered along the riverside for a bit while the sun was shining, which, again, was full of scenic prettiness.

 

 

Things I Learned
I went with the advice of a friend, and got packing cubes to make the whole clothes thing more manageable.
On various US trips, there were enough clothing items of each sort that they formed their own City-States in my suitcase, jealously guarding their own territory from interloping socks and marauding shirts, and only rarely fraternising. This wasn’t going to work in a backpack with an 8-day supply of everything.

Version One of the scheme was, I think, a good try; The mesh bag which came with the bag for shirts, a couple of small mesh-top packing ‘cubes’ for socks & underwears.†
It worked OK, but involves more faffing about than I’d like.

Version Two involves a dry-bag of the same size as my designated laundry bag, though a different colour (green for dirty laundry, orange for clean clothing, and I’m not sure what the sectarian implications of that are), with all of the shirts, socks, & underwears‡ in the one bag.

† Not a typo.
‡ Totally deliberate.